Sunday 31 December 2017

Lego Zero - design

Christmas/New Year break. It's been too cold to be messing about with the real car in the garage so in Christmas tradition I've been playing with toys instead...

Found the Lego Caterham 620R Set #21307 on sale and my wife bought a set for me. Once built, seeing as it is lego, started to think about transforming it to something a little closer to GN13.


Lego Caterham original

Nice model in its own right - my plan is to make the modification non-destructive to let me revert to the original kit at any time.

Lego Zero conversion

Changes:
  - GRP panels to Red, Stainless panels to Grey,
  - Zetec nearside exhaust,
  - Engine intake/exhaust sides reversed,
  - Windscreen frame added and wing mirrors modified,
  - Front indicators moved to the nose,
  - Front number plate blank...


  - Dashboard colour change
  - Dashboard dials re-arranged into a single row,
  - Aux panel added,
  - Gear lever, handbrake lever and tunnel area re-worked,
  - Fuel filler moved to nearside,
  - Boot mounted spare wheel,
  - Orange rear indicators,
  - Rear number plate blank.


It would be possible to re-spray, but I'm keen to keep the model stock lego as much as possible and make non-destructive changes to the original parts - Lego models are more a caricature of the real thing than a faithful reproduction.

In monetary terms its madness... :)   but fun all the same!

Update -
Parts for the main build waiting on one more delivery from Hungary, meanwhile - can't help tinkering with more options and an engine mod. Really need the weather to cheer up so I can get back out in the real car before I break the bank on plastic!

Saturday 30 December 2017

2017 - Unfinished jobs - LED headlights

The plan was to try upgrading the headlights to LED too, check the resulting pattern with a local garage and hopefully drop the headlights power requirements into the bargain.

Picked up some reasonable lamps from ebay which appear to have the right sort of light guide/baffles in place. However...

These particular LEDs only permit high OR low beam on at any one time, turns out the Zero loom leaves both high and low beams on when on high beam mode and when flashing high beams.

It should be a relatively simple mod to the loom to have only high or low beam in all scenarios - but the weather is just not conducive to messing around in the fusebox / lighting loom in an unheated garage. So the car currently sits - headlights removed thus:

A little warmer weather closer to 10ÂșC and I'll get back on it.

Update - loom adjustment made and installed here.